worth the ride…

It’s a long time since I owned a home. It’s a long time since I felt any vested possession of anything at all. I haven’t had a will for a long time, mainly because I haven’t had any property that I valued enough to want to pass it to anyone. My life was essentially out of a suitcase, although my friends will scream that I shipped a load of property between countries, most of that was things like glasses, plates and crockery, which is the last thing anyone wants dumped in their lap as a hand-me-down… Aaaaaaanywaaaay, as usual, I digress…

Because I have just now dropped my biggest amount of money ever on a home, and I am now in more debt than I have ever been in before. A fairly unpleasant sensation, I must say. But I have handed over all this money and gotten into all this debt for… the house of my dreams… I always wanted an old home. I always wanted the wood floors and the crown molding cornicing and the high ceilings. Since I got my dog, I have wanted a good yard for him to run around in. And since being with Handsome, we have wanted somewhere that his kids would be happy to come to and live in, and that was the complete opposite of the teeny tiny house we had before…

The house doesn’t have everything we wanted, it doesn’t have the land we would need to pursue our gardening dreams, it doesn’t have space to grow into should we need more room, it doesn’t have a spare room for guests, or a granny flat for my mother, but it’s exactly where we wanted to be relative to Handsome’s kids, so that’s all that matters really! He will now be able to participate more fully in their lives and they won’t have to spend significant portions of their time with him in a car driving across the State!

It’s amazing the joy a new house can bring. I have moved homes (rented) about once every 6-12 months for the entire time I was in London as an adult, and part of that was because I truly enjoy change and a change in scenery. But there is always that counterintuitive longing to put down roots and to settle somewhere and frankly, to just RELAX into a place. But I have never been able to do that before, and I have never felt comfortable to stay in one place, to stay with one person, to give myself over to what it means to be PERMANENT.

Enter Handsome, enter true happiness, goodbye old wandering ways. No more for me the thrill of the next continent… or country… or town… or village… We’ve picked our home for the next few years, and it’s in a sleepy town in central Virginia, surrounded by farmland, and wineries, and historic homes. It’s in the town center, so we can walk to everything we need, but it’s on a beautiful quiet street and surrounded by homes I will quietly covet from my wraparound porch…

The back garden has two beautiful black walnut trees. And best of all, there is a shed which has plenty of room to accommodate both mine and Handsome’s hobbies. The basement is unfinished but will happily act as a storage area and extra workspace for Handsome. I have an extra freezer down there for all my cooking creations, and he has an extra fridge down there for his homebrew. The garden has just enough room for a vegetable and herb garden which will satisfy our desire for the good life, without taking over our lives, if you know what I mean…

And that poor dog who has spent too much of his time cooped up in tiny places or inhibited by a lead now has a place he can run and run… and run he does…

Nothing is ever perfect. My new commute is anywhere between 1.5 to 3 hours each way and when Handsome takes his new job, his will start at an hour, but if you are travelling to somewhere you want to be, it makes the ride somewhat easier…